Search results for “site/human rights”

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    The extra-long logging haul

    As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they…

  • Youth Voices: Harper’s Crime Strategy

    Closing the Doors on Youth  On November 12th, 2010, the federal government announced an investment of $45 million to increase the number of beds in Manitoba jails. Steven Harper’s Conservative government has made it well known that getting tough on crime is a top priority. While there is evidence that…

  • Tough on crime will likely lead to more crime, bigger deficit: report

    OTTAWA – The Harper governmentís tough on crime agenda will likely increase the incidence of crime and the deficit, says a new report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The report, by CCPA Research Associate Paula Mallea, analyses the financial and human costs of the tough…

  • The Fear Factor

    Stephen Harper’s “Tough on Crime” Agenda Download 982.08 KB 58 pages According to Statistics Canada, crime rates have been trending down for over 20 years. This includes the violent crime rate. Yet the Harper government continues to insist that there is an epidemic of crime, and that Canadians should be…

  • Resource Economics Project (BC)

    A windfall for BC’s five biggest forest companies?

    Shortly before the May election, the provincial government withdrew legislation that could have handed de facto control of publicly owned forestlands to a handful of forest companies. The contentious sections of the bill were dropped amid a swelling chorus of questions about why such a gift would be bestowed without…

  • Time to move beyond the debate on assisted suicide

    The long smouldering debate on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) flared up early this summer when on June 5 the Quebec National Assembly passed Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care. The legislation gives patients in some situations the possibility of requesting medical aid in dying, widely considered a euphemism for euthanasia.…

  • December 2004: Waste Not, Want Not

    One of our most precious resources flushed down the drain Nearly a century ago, when Dr. F. H. King visited China, Japan and Korea, he found that the “fertilizer” used by their farmers to produce bountiful crops was human excrement. In his 1911 book about Asian agriculture, Farmers of Forty…

  • A little-known election is limiting your free expression rights

    You might not have noticed it, but since June 4th there has been an election going on in British Columbia – and legislation that governs that election severely limits what people can say about the issues relating to that election (and how they can say it) until the election is completed…

  • October 2004: Nortel Implicated in Disastrous Liquidation of Columbia’s Telecom

    Nortel Networks, Canada’s largest high-tech corporation, has helped bring about the liquidation of TELECOM, Colombia’s biggest telecommunications company, and the likely privatization of its successor. Brampton-based Nortel has assets of U.S.$15.8 billion, 37,000 employees and a presence in 150 countries. Plummeting global demand for telecommunications equipment and poor management have…

  • Resource Economics Project (BC)

    BC forest bill urgently in need of a rewrite

    It wasn’t so long ago that the British Columbia government was investing lots of political capital in striking a more productive “new relationship” with First Nations. Which makes it all the more disturbing that in the midst of the very short upcoming legislative session the provincial government intends to introduce…

  • Financialization of housing must be confronted

    Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press January 12, 2023 Government housing policy preferences are based on values, the most fundamental being the extent to which housing is viewed as a right, or as a commodity. From a rights value base, housing is a social good — a home and…

  • BC Budget 2021: Stay-the-course budget misses the mark on key areas of urgency outside health

    The BC government tabled a surprisingly stay-the-course budget today, making some improvements on the margins but missing the opportunity to shift BC towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy. While it appropriately includes large sums of time-limited spending relating to the pandemic (and indeed BC has led other provinces on…